An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since I have a weak spot for Abbey Hoes, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, what a weird and misleading poster. Seriously, I thought for a moment that it might be a sport feature. At least, Abbey Hoes didn’t disappoint, that’s for sure. Indeed, she was only 20 years old at the time, not too much older than her character and she really nailed it, probably delivering her best performance I have seen so far. Concerning the movie itself, well, to be honest, I really struggled with the damned thing though.  I’m still not sure if it was the main issue but the beginning was rather clunky. Basically, Nena was an only child, her mother was Dutch, her father was German, her father had also MS, her parents were also separated and the damned thing also took place in the 80’s for some reason. However, you had to piece all this information together yourself and, even though it might have been done on purpose (I doubt it though), this process was rather tedious and, in my opinion, ineffective. For example, I actually found out what the father was actually suffering from only after watching this movie. I also believe that the characters, except maybe for Nena, were not enough fleshed out. They especially struggled to give anything really interesting to do for Monic Hendrickx which is quite a shame since she is in fact one of the best Dutch actresses out there. It’s too bad because it turned out to be much better than the fluffy stuff that you usually get with your average Dutch production and much more interesting than a lame movie about baseball. There was also something really sweet about this teenage relationship between Nena and Carlo. I wish they didn’t make him kiss some other random girl, I think it was really unnecessary and a cheap way to add some dramatic curve to their relationship. The movie also struggled to display how such a young girl would find out that her disabled father had a (understandable) death wish, how she would eventually accept it and how she would even help him with this wish after all. This was actually some really strong stuff but, unfortunately, they never managed to properly handle this great potential. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look.